Electronic authentication is commonplace in today's highly-connected society, especially in view of the fact that more and more individuals are conducting financial and personal transaction electronically.
Authentication can come in a variety of forms, such as single-factor authentication and multifactor authentication. Authentication can be done with different degrees of perceived strength. For example, biometric authentication is typically believed to be a stronger form of authentication than an identifier and password combination.
Some authentication requires a user to possess something (such as a token or a magnetic card) and to know something (such as a password or key value). Generally, authentication requires some action on the part of the individual being authenticated, such as having finger scanned, entering a card and Personal Identification Number (PIN), providing a token or certificate with a key, and the like.
Most authentication techniques are binary in nature, which means the authentication technique authenticates an entity or fails to authenticate the entity. Authentication is typically associated with individuals being authenticated but in fact, hardware resources and software resources are also subject to authentication in computer systems.
However, if authentication is wanted not for necessarily performing a secure transaction, accessing a secure system, or verifying a secure asset but, rather authentication is wanted for deciding whether there is a measurable degree of confidence that someone can be identified without any affirmative knowledge or action on the part of that someone, then very little exists in the industry for this type of authentication. But, such a technique can provide a variety of beneficial opportunities for enterprises for purposes of: marketing, customer service, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), security within an enterprise, security of an individual's personal device, security within law and government agencies, and the like.
Therefore, there is a need for improved authentication mechanisms.